There are many good reasons to shop locally, preferably for local goods and services – you’ll keep your neighbors busy and happy and when it comes to food items you can be reasonably sure that the produce is fresh and free of such nonsense additives like the much mentioned “pink slime”. Taking it a step further would be to harvest your own food, something I’ve been doing on a regular basis for shellfish and fish. As for leafy greens, I focus mostly on native and invasive “wild” plants, and I have limited knowledge of growing and tending the core vegetables one finds on store shelves. So my contributions to the dinner table are limited in that realm. Fortunately, there are plants in my own yard that are so abundant they almost cry to be harvested, and so I did with hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta). The little plants are flowering right now, but the basal rosette of tiny leaves is where the action is, at least for culinary purposes. You can use it as a replacement for parsley or other fine leaved herbs in your dishes. The plant has a peppery quality that is most noticable when eaten raw. It is much less overpowering when cooked. Try it out while it lasts – hairy bittercress is an early garden resident and the leaves are much less appetizing when the little plant concentrates on producing seed in a few weeks. We had it today in a littleneck pasta dish, and it was delicious!
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